Following the success of his Oscar-winning film Parasite, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho is working on an animation that takes place in the deep sea.
The Korean-language animation will be Joon-ho’s first foray into animation. It will be made in collaboration with 4th Creative Party, the production company behind Joon-ho’s The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja. The studio is also known for collaborating with Park Chan-wook on Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden.
According to Screen Daily, “the full CGI animation will deal with the drama that arises between deep sea creatures and human beings”.
Joon-ho has been working on the script since 2018, but production on the animation won’t begin until he polishes off the script for his English-language live-action film, which is set to be his next production.
The filmmaker confirmed in early February that he had finished one of two new screenplays he was working on. “It feels like I’m splitting my brain in half left and right writing these two scripts,” the director said. “But I finished one last week.”
He previously revealed the existence of these two films backstage at the 2020 Oscars, revealing one was a Korean movie “located in Seoul” with “unique elements of horror and action”. He described the English-language feature as “a drama film based on a true event that happened in 2016”.
No further information about either film is known at this time. In the meantime, Joon-ho has been working on a TV series adaptation of Parasite with Adam McKay (of Succession and The Big Short).
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast last month, McKay assured fans that the show is “chugging full speed ahead”, and won’t merely be a remake of the original film. “It’s an original series,” he said. “It’s in the same universe as the feature, but it’s an original story that lives in that same world.”